A lone tree stands shrouded in fog. The scene has a mysterious effect on the viewer: it is nostalgic, seeming to call up memories from the distant past, though leaving us with the feeling that we have never seen it before.

In this work, Wu seeks to fuse the techniques of traditional Western painting with those of Eastern painting. Western landscape painting, which relies on perspective, and East Asian painting, which cannot capture a subject through visual analysis and composition alone, may appear to be diametrically opposed in essence, but this video work fuses the two without any clear sense of the boundary that ought to separate them. The viewer can sense the latent commonalities and connections between different cultures, but at the same time, is made aware of the degree to which biases and preconceptions affect our visual perceptions. What our eyes perceived as a scene of sublime beauty from the vast natural world is actually a small bonsai tree amid artificially generated mist. Here, the boundary separating natural from artificial becomes as indistinct as that between East and West.

Wu Chi-Tsung

Born in 1981, in Taipei, Taiwan, where he now lives and works. Studied painting and sculpture at the Department of Fine Arts, Taipei National University of the Arts. He participated in numerous group exhibitions including at “Roppongi Art Night 2015″ (Tokyo, Japan) in 2015. Solo exhibitions at the IT Park Gallery (Taipei, Taiwan) in 2004 and 2009, the CFCCA (Manchester, UK) in 2013, the Site gallery, (Sheffield, UK) in 2014 and others. He received the Taipei Arts Award in 2003 and the Award of Critics and Editors of Art Magazines (“WRO Media Art Biannual”, Wroclaw, Poland) in 2013.